Many warm thanks to our visiting PhD, Anne Nørkjær Bang, University of Southern Denmark. She presented a portion of her research with the Posthumanities Hub and Eco- & Bioart Lab Webinar series in what turned out to be a fabulous event.
Tag: webinar Page 1 of 3
Please join us tomorrow at 15:15 hrs CET for our next Posthumanities Hub and EBL Webinar. Zoom – http://bit.ly/3ZvpwjE
In 2010, Thomas Friedman announced that “Global Weirding is Here” in a widely-cited op-ed in the New York Times. With a nod to environmentalist Hunter Lovins as the coining the term, Friedman’s piece and “global weirding” as a concept have since gained traction across popular media as well as in the academic world, particularly within the environmental humanities. In other words, as an ecocritical category or frame, the weird is neither new nor is it restricted to an historical moment, though it has perhaps acquired a particular cultural currency in the context of an increasing awareness of a climate-changing world. “The weird” as a broader cultural mode or aesthetic has also maintained attention in cultural studies, literary criticism, philosophy and contemporary art, and has emerged as a possible way to structure our way of related to this unprecedented ecological moment. This presentation will build on the concept of global weirding by introducing queer and feminist studies of affect, aesthetics, and archive in order to enliven the juncture of weird and more established notions of queer ecology.
(Text provided by the organizers)
The Creative-Ai (AI and the Artistic Imaginary – WASP-HS) and MUSAiC project teams at KTH kindly welcome you to the third seminar in our series “dialogues: probing the future of creative technology” on Thursday 2 February, 15:00-16:00 (CEST).
This seminar (held on zoom, https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/67706212115), we talk about “Artistic and legal-philosophical perspectives on deep fakes”. We start with two presentations from our invited guests (see below), followed by a discussion between each other and then with the audience.
Our guests are Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti and Katja de Vries:
Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti are an award-winning experiential artist duo who founded their collaborative art practice, known as Operator, in 2016. Referred to as “the two critical contemporary voices on digital art’s international stages” (Clot Magazine), their expertises collide in large scale conceptual works recognizable for their poetic approach to technology. Ti’s background as an immersive artist and HCI technologist, and Catherine’s as a choreographer, performance artist and gender scholar make for a uniquely medium-fluent output–bringing together environments, technology and the body.
Operator has been awarded a Lumen Prize (Immersive Environments), ADC Award (Gold Cube), S+T+ARTS Prize (Honorary Mention), and MediaFutures (a European Commission funded programme). They’ve been speakers at Christie’s Art+Tech Summit, Art Basel, MIT Open Doc Lab, BBC Click, Bloomberg ART+TECHNOLOGY, Ars Electronica, Contemporary Istanbul, and CADAF. Ti and Catherine are originally from Los Angeles and currently based in Berlin.
Title: Soft Evidence–Synthetic cinema as contemporary art
Abstract:
Art has always explored notions of truth and fiction, and the relationship between image and reality. Synthetic media’s capability to depict events that never happened makes that relationship more complex than ever. How can artists use synthetic media/deepfakes creatively, and start conversations about ethics and the social implications of unreliable realities? In this presentation, artist duo Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti of Operator discuss their work Soft Evidence–a slow synthetic cinema series created as part of MediaFutures in 2021. They will detail how research and interviews with experts on media manipulation in law, education, and activism informed their creative and technical processes. As experiential artists, Ti and Catherine plan to exhibit Soft Evidence as an installation, a site for the public to learn and process a rapidly changing media landscape through immersion and feeling states.
(For Katja:)
Katja de Vries is an assistant professor in public law at Uppsala
University. Her work operates at the intersection of IT law and
philosophy of technology. Her current research focuses on the challenges
that AI-generated content (‘deepfakes’ or ‘synthetic data’) poses to
data protection, intellectual property and other fields of law.
Title: How can law deal with the counterfactual metaphysics of synthetic
media?
Abstract:
How can law deal with deep fakes and synthetic media? Law is influenced
by the politics, norms and ontologies of the society in which it
operates but is never exhausted by it. Law always first and foremost
obeys to an already existing system of parameters, rules concepts and
ontologies, to which new elements can only be incrementally added. This
contributes to legal certainty and foreseeability, as well as law’s
slowness to adapt.
The EU legislator is trying to adapt to new digital challenges and
opportunities by creating a true avalanche of legislation. In the case
of deep fakes and other synthetic media the question, however, is if
operative concepts such as transparency and informed consent and
dichotomies such as fact v. fiction, human v. machine, etc. work well
with the counterfactual metaphysics of synthetic media, namely the
articulation of what is possible into digital mathematical spaces of
seemingly endless alternative realities, and extensions in time and
space. More concretely: is it important to simply flag that we are
interacting with a synthetic work? Can we consent to live-on forever in
disseminating digital alter-egos?
Welcome to The Posthumanities Hub and The Eco- and Bioart Lab Webinar “Oceanic Humanities for the Global South” with Prof. Em. Isabel Hofmeyr, Dr Charne Lavery and Dr Phindezwa Mnyaka!
When: 15th September 2022, 13:15-15:00
Where: On Zoom (see registration details below)
“Oceanic Humanities for the Global South”
Rising sea levels, as the most visible sign of climate change, require new styles of research and writing in the humanities: an oceanic humanities. It is also important that this research speaks simultaneously to environmental and decolonial themes, recognising not only environmental crisis but also global inequality as legacies of empire.
The Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project pursues a research agenda that combines critical oceanic studies with postcolonial theorizations of the seas to evolve an oceanic humanities appropriate to global south. It aims to engage with both human and non-human aspects of the ocean, with the depth and the surface of the seas; to decolonize histories of oceanic space, while providing new approaches to aesthetic understandings of water.
Based in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa, the principal investigators, Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery and Phindezwa Mnyaka, will provide an overview of the collaborative project so far and outline questions for the future.
Bios:
Isabel Hofmeyr is Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at NYU. She has worked extensively on the Indian Ocean world and oceanic themes more generally. Her most recent book is Dockside Reading: Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House (2022. With Charne Lavery, she co-directs the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South (www.oceanichumanities.com).
Charne Lavery a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria and Research Associated based at WISER, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She explores ocean writing of the global South in a time of environmental change. Her first monograph, Writing Ocean Worlds: Indian Ocean Fiction in English, appeared in 2021. With Isabel Hofmeyr, she co-directs the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South (www.oceanichumanities.com).
Phindezwa ‘Phindi’ Mnyaka is a senior lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the Western Cape. She teaches courses on Africa’s colonial history, including gender and colonialism. Her research interests include mid-century photography in southern Africa. She has published widely on these. She also has an interest in different modes of historical engagement. Since 2019 she has convened a postgraduate course on experimental history writing drawing from a range of genres and disciplines.
REGISTRATION:
In order to register for the webinar, please click on the link:
https://liu-se.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5Aqc-qgqzIiG9LF3ixaySt8ClOClZvVMlKK
Welcome to The Posthumanities Hub & The Eco- and Bioart Lab Hybrid Seminar on “Design Ecologies: Towards Artistic and Postconventional (Research) Practices” with speakers Carrie Foulkes (University of Glasgow) and Dr Lynn Wilson (University of Glasgow), which takes place on 14th June at 13:15-15:00 CEST in the room Faros (Tema building, Campus Valla, Linköping University), and on Zoom (for registration details, see below)
Generous emptiness: sculptural and architectural encounters
Abstract:
This talk will ponder different kinds of ‘emptiness’ and their potentialities. As a way into thinking about some relevant themes, I’ll introduce the Sun Hive, exploring the hive’s material and conceptual aspects and how it symbolises a certain kind of relationship between humans and honeybees. Unlike many other forms of bee box that already have frames installed inside them, the Sun Hive provides a colony with a primarily ’empty’ space in which to build their comb, contained by a form that reflects and honours the bees’ natural preferences. The hive is imbued with an ethos of generosity, love and respect rather than of control.
Thinking about the Sun Hive will enable a consideration of some of the meaningful and generative ways in which an artistic practice can meet with a scientific method of observation in an ecological context. We’ll also look at spatial sculptural/installation practices as transformative sites in terms of human health and wellbeing. I’ll narrate embodied encounters with artworks and the ways in which these have resonated and provided support during a time of bereavement. The talk will close with a reflection on some of the ways in which built environments can be conducive to contemplative states, drawing on examples of remarkable public spaces such as the Kamppi Chapel – “the chapel of silence” – in Helsinki, and contrasting this with the prevalent strategy of ‘hostile architecture’ in urban design.
Bio:
Carrie Foulkes is a British essayist and poet whose multidisciplinary practice also encompasses visual and live arts. She is particularly interested in the intersections of experimental literature, narrative studies, bodywork, performance, medical humanities and bioethics. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Glasgow and a visiting researcher at Linköping University. https://carriefoulkes.com/
Circular Design Perspectives from the UK. The Case for Multidisciplinary Practice
Abstract
The implementation of a circular economy requires a multidisciplinary approach to close the loop and advance research and practice across citizens, consumers, and businesses. Artists and designers have a vital role to play in advancing conceptual and practical applications of circular thinking – new material research, design for disassembly, zero waste design and design for durability.
The presentation will begin with an overview from Lynn about her experience of applying western art and design teaching practices with indigenous people in sub-Saharan Africa and how this earlier experience shaped her understanding of the current global environmental crisis. From there, the presentation will share examples from Lynn’s practice as a consultant working with design led and non-design led businesses and academics, critiquing solutions for a more sustainable society. Lynn will present her new project – Circular Materials Repository, working in collaboration with the Creative Informatics Centre, Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh University.
Bio:
Dr Lynn Wilson is a Scottish textile designer, circular design practitioner, researcher, and lecturer, who recently completed a social science PhD at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow. Her consultancy, Circular Design Scotland advances circular design knowledge through working with artists, designers, and businesses and is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of the Arts London, Centre for Circular Design.
Twitter: @LynnIWilson
Instagram: @LynnIWilson
TEDx Bath: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYqXf6ewboo
REGISTRATION
REGISTER HERE: https://liu-se.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5Ukd-ihrzMuGNMnDeKr_jKdV9x3cdrjdt4X
